A side note, Anita Kennedy is my caregiver, Wednesday 12:30 - 5. She washes vegetables and fruit in a Baggie (with a Cuisinart). My right hand quite dead, but it functions for washes dishes, writing checks (bad!) and the pliable bags, forefinger and thumb, a transport the laundry, bathroom, kitchen, (canned goods, toothpaste, Milk Bones, whatever). The right hand is a claw-arm.

Spaghetti Squash:400 degrees, 1 hour, baking sheet/aluminum foil. Cut it in half, take the seeds out, salt and pepper, a dapple margarine or Earth Balance. It’s hot…cool down in half-in-hour. Rings of SS, just like spaghetti. (See below, internet.) Use a fork. Pyrex container.

Then the stroke happened. Captions play a big part of it for person, places or things. Captions settings are great for news, documentaries and just for fun. Indeed, my brain is fried. For example, I can’t wrap my head around it for; Democrat or Republican, the weather’s coming west or east, where is San Diego and Boston? I know stuff, but it’s hard. Just for an instant, a millisecond, really, the brain regroups. Captions help; it’s the narrative.

It was a beautiful spring day and I tripped up the (seven steps on the porch). It was snowing out, the van guy was late, the one-step-stoop was unstable with hemi-cane and whacked my right leg in the van. I miscalculated the vacuum and lost my balance and …the dog food incident. Three dogs, hungry for kibble. I wiped out my footing and down I came. I use metoprolol (Lopressor) and I’m dizzy all the time…you can count on that.

I tooled around four times in wheel chair, three weeks. The house is one-floor. I have a smallish kitchen. Swearwords abound.

Monday, September 7, 2015

My right hand is defunct and I eat with utensils on my left hand. The normal fork is cumbersome at best. The knife slices meat, such as chicken, steak and fish, but what about fork? Before the stroke, I'm a two-handed person; a knife and fork. The chicken or the egg? Clearly, it changed.

The Knork tines created a beveled edge to cut through foods, kind of a rocking design. A frequently asked question, "The finger platform provides comfort and leverage while using the fork to cut." The utensil was appropriate for the right or left hand. It's a built-in system with a fork and knife. It's pretty cool.

I put the Knork in my purse or pocket for pizza, ad-hoc dinner and snackies. Dishwasher safe.

Fifteen years, in 1999, I had a stroke; whopping, catastrophic, massive ischemic thrombosis. I couldn’t speak, walk and tooled away in wheel chair from the nurses station in five hospitals. I was a blank slate. The left side of brain was fried. A left middle cerebral artery has a clot and complete occlusion. Not good. My left gray matter is 80-99%, per the carotid duplex.

It’s some good news, 15 years later, my left carotid arteries are clear. Numbers and letters are bad for me; like a fog. Like slow motion. Backwards and forewards, right to left…I have no concept. Slowly, I’m reading again. Author Carl Hiaasen, he’s a Florida guy, totally irreverent; he makes me laughing. Laughing is good.

My right hand is dead in the water. After the stroke, I wrote gibberish on my left hand. I won an AP award from an editoral I wrote for ’99, six months before the stroke. The universe is chortling hysterically; God’s little irony. Specifically, I couldn’t remember my name, address and ZIP code. I was real mess.

Seven months later, I came home from the hospital in July, 2001. I had rampant Afib for, at least for twenty years. The doctors were puzzled and ordered generic pill, metoprolol, aka, Lopressor. Lopressor reduces the heart rate, I get that. I took the pill, but the Afib was back with a vengeance; pounding, hammering and, frankly, I thought I was going to die.

I believe it’s mercury fillings. The Afib is gone. The dentist extracted the mercury fillings (I have dentures), in 2005. No panic attacks, no heart-stopping Afib and I have my life back. After the stroke, I had one-word sentences; food, water, haircut. I'm slowly learning to speak. It's wonderful feeling. Mercury stays with you for a long, long, God-awful time. But, I HAVE time.

I digress; aphasia, loss of ability. I am overwhelmed with aphasia; it's engulfing. I can't form the words.